Rolls-Royce's engines will warm giant tomato greenhouses and CO2 in their
exhaust gases will help speed up their growth

Tomatoes on the Isle of Wight are to get the Rolls-Royce treatment - with engines made by the company helping the red fruits grow faster.

The company is supplying engines whose by-products will warm greenhouses on the island. Exhaust fumes from the 12-cylinder engines will also be be used to help the tomatoes grow.

The exhaust the engines produce will be “scrubbed” by catalysts to remove pollutants and then the cleaned-up gas will be pumped into the greenhouses. The carbon dioxide (CO2) the exhaust contains is a source of food for plants and helps speed up their growth.

How the engines which will warm the tomatoes look (Picture: Rolls-Royce)

Rolls’ Bergen engines unit – part of the FTSE 100 company’s land and sea unit – is supplying four engines to APS Salads on the Isle of Wight.

These gas-fuelled engines will be connected to generators which produce power which is fed in to the island’s energy grid, with the by-products of running the engines delivering a boost to APS’s tomatoes.

Project developer P3P Partners will operate the combined engines and generators, which will each produce 5,605 kW of electrical power and 6,415 kW of heat, and will be housed in sound-proofed building next to the greenhouses.

Matthias Vogel, from Rolls-Royce power systems, said: “We are delighted that Rolls-Royce power plants will provide the electricity, heat and CO2 for tomatoes being grown by APS Salads. Working with P3P, we have developed a bespoke energy generation concept that will increase their crop yield while reducing the impact on the environment.”

The company said it had installed more than 50 similar combined heat and power systems around the world.

Rolls’ land and sea unit has recently been a source of problems for the blue-chip engineering group, which is best known for the jet engines it produces for aircraft. The fall in the oil price meant that energy industry customers cut back on orders for engines used in the sector, leading Rolls to warn the division would not perform as well as had been hoped.

Last month Rolls said it would cut 600 jobs in its Norwegian-focused marine business as a result to the lower oil price, though said the decision would be “broadly neutral” on the group’s profits for 2015.